


The Outlander

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Series: Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun [3]
Category: Alien Series, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Attempted Murder, Culture Shock, Environmentalism, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Master of Death Harry Potter, Murder, Religion, Science Fiction, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2020-02-28 06:05:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18750526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: Marooned on a strange, desert, world once inhabited by the progenitors of mankind, the alien priest Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun must make use of the ill-fated Prometheus and its crew while searching for the answers that Lily believes he should seek.





	1. Chapter 1

_“The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost; for none now live who remember it.”_

\- The Lord of the Rings

 

* * *

The universe, Elizabeth Shaw, would soon discover, was much smaller than she had realized.

 

Her world had started so wide and vast, carted about the world by her father, but with his death it seemed to gradually shrink with every passing year. It was, perhaps, part of the reason she was so confident in her theory of Engineers and intelligent design when so many had argued against her.

 

The world, even the universe as vast as it was, had always been small and there were too many wonderous coincidences in the world for Elizabeth to ever truly accept the shrugging explanation of mere happenstance. On finding her Engineers on the wall of that ancient Scottish cave, three years ago now, which in turn matched Engineers in other ancient forgotten places pointing towards the stars that were their home, the world had seemed joyously smaller.

 

Answers, for the first time in hundreds of thousands of years, were within human reach.

 

The universe, however, was smaller still.

 

The Doctor Elizabeth Shaw, of that moment, standing on the bridge and staring with the other crew members at the video feeds set up outside the ship was only on the cusp of realizing it.

 

“Holy mother of Jesus,” Charlie said as he looked at the screen, “Ellie, baby, I know what we’ve been saying but I didn’t think—”

 

“That they’d come out to greet us?” Milburn, the biologist asked, a joking edge to his voice, trying to cover the way it was shaking.

 

Elizabeth didn’t blame him, she was shaking too, because she had thought she’d prepared herself for anything. She had been prepared for their demise eons ago, she’d been prepared for a civilization so advanced its technology came to resemble magic, but she was not sure she had prepared herself for this mix.

 

It was a barren, desert, world that lacked Earth’s rich diversity. There seemed to be nothing living where they had landed, but there were signs of civilization, dozens of pyramid temples buried in the sand. Then, when they’d landed and prepared for disembarking, a lone figure in white had appeared just in front of their ship on the path to the pyramid.

 

“Fucking Christ, is it human?” Fifield asked, twitching slightly, raking a hand through his bright red mohawk, back and forth until it lost its texture.

 

It was too hard to tell, the resolution was not what it could be, their higher definition cameras hadn’t been set up yet, these were only the installed lenses that had lasted three years through space flight.

 

He looked human, he was tall for a human man but not outside the realm of possibility, he stood on two legs with a human’s posture. More, in the grand scheme of the universe and the distance between them, he looked damningly human.

 

Enough that there was little doubt in Elizabeth’s mind that somehow, across all that space and time, some other man was here on this small forgotten world. And in the face of that small fact, a coincidence so large it hardly seemed a coincidence at all, the human crew of the Prometheus and its one android could only stare open mouthed as if waiting for something.

 

“He’s just standing there, why is he just—”

 

“He’s waiting,” Elizabeth said, something that seemed so trivial and obvious, and yet still had to be breathed aloud in wonder, “He’s waiting for us to come out.”

 

Did he know it was a ship? Did he know there were people, humans, inside? Did he know where it had come from? Had he come here by similar means himself or had he always been here? Were there others, was he an Engineer, had he been waiting all this time for them?

 

She suddenly felt nervous, she’d been prepared, but she hadn’t truly been. She’d prepared herself too much in the wrong direction. She had been prepared for the disappointment of finding they had never been there or they had but were long gone. Suddenly, after three years spent sleeping, they were here, and the moment had come to not only see her makers but to in fact meet them.

 

At a sound Elizabeth turned around, noted that Vickers, Weyland’s lead representative was not merely suited up but loading a gun. The woman, colder than ice, far colder than even the android David, merely raised an eyebrow at Elizabeth’s expression as if to dare her to say something.

 

The man, the thing, didn’t look armed but on the cameras it was hard to tell. More, whatever weapons he might be carrying could be incomprehensible to them as guns would have been in the Middle Ages. They were minutes from walking out into the unknown and even Elizabeth knew better than to argue that.

 

So, she said nothing, held her tongue and accepted the weapon she’d been trained in but wished she had no need for, and with all but the pilots disembarked and slowly approached the figure.

 

Up close, he looked both more and less human than he had on the screen. He was taller than she’d thought, and very thin, giving him a stretched out and almost delicate look. The skin of his hands, his long thin fingers clutching a dark walking stick, was impossibly pale. There was no hint of blue veins, brown freckles from the sun, or pink from blood, instead it was all a pure and daunting white. As if he had been carved from marble. Beyond that it was hard to tell what to make of him, the rest of him was covered in layers of thin pale fabric worn in deserts, dark goggles perched over his eyes, leaving only his hands and strands of flaxen hair peaking out from beneath a white shawl.

 

There was no suit though, no suit, no mask, and no obvious supply of oxygen. He, alone of all of them, because even David had donned a suit even when he had no real need to, was truly exposed to the elements.

 

He looked, for a moment, like a science fiction writer’s interpretation of Lawrence of Arabia. For the oddest of seconds, she could almost imagine Peter O’Toole standing beneath that costume.

 

He stood as still, but again almost unnaturally so, as still as a statue. Yet, for all that he simply stood there, there was a kind of presence to him as if you could tell his eyes beneath that dark glass was turned directly on them and nowhere else. Though he gave no physical sign of it, it was somehow obvious that he was waiting.

 

Slowly, uncertainly, Elizabeth turned to David. He, as far as she understood, had spent the past three years studying languages for some hint of the Engineer’s mother tongue. Somehow, he looked almost surprised by her attention, then he blinked, and the expression was gone, and he slowly began to address the man in what appeared to be standard greetings in a variety of languages. Some, Elizabeth thought she could recognize, the rhythm and sounds that had carried even into languages of the modern era. Others, though, were formed of syllables she hadn’t realized could be pronounced by a human tongue and throat.

 

Next to her, Charlie, unnerved but trying not to show it, muttered under his breath, “Jesus, what’s even the point? The likelihood that he knows—”

 

“Outlander,” the man called out, in a crisp, English, accent that halted David halfway through his sentence, “I appreciate your effort, though you do not have to go so far.”

 

“Holy shit—” Milburn gaped next to her, cursing under his breath, and Elizabeth couldn’t say she blamed him.

 

The alien, no the man, didn’t wait for them to gather their wits and think about what it must mean. That someone from Earth, someone from England perhaps, had come here before them. Or else that they had been watching closely, far closely than even Elizabeth had thought, and had close kept track of Earth’s current lingua franca.

 

Instead he said, in a voice somehow clear despite the wind and the fabric, “I am in need of passage on your starship.”

 

“Our spaceship,” David said then, seamlessly switching to English, keeping his calm while the rest of them were only capable of staring, “Is your own in need of repairs?”

 

Unspoken was an assumption, that the man had traveled here himself, that he was not from this place in the same way that they weren’t from this place. Elizabeth held her breath, uncertain of which answer she should wish for and what that answer might mean.

 

The man considered this, for a moment, and then answered, “My means of transport,” he paused before that final word, as if that was not what he would have called it if he was speaking to someone else, “Cannot be remedied so easily as that.”

 

David still seemed the only one capable of speaking, but he did so as if holding a normal conversation, as if he was speaking to a man lost in a city, “Do you even know where we came from?”

 

“Earth, I presume,” he said before adding, a mischievous smile now in his tone, hidden behind fabric, “The third planet from a central star, that pale, blue, blessed dot. Earth, I promise you, is close enough to where I wish to be.”

 

“Well—” David stopped, paused, narrowed his eyes as he looked at the man. It was… such a human expression, Charlie had often said that he thought Weyland and Yutani were making androids too human these days, that it unnerved him. Elizabeth had always felt this extreme, had found herself oddly fond of David, but in this moment, she could glimpse what Charlie meant.

 

Just like a man, he could hesitate, pause, and you could see the wheels in his head spinning.

 

“I am afraid there is no room on our transport for another, living, being,” the android finally answered, polite and deferential as always, “We have neither the food, the room, nor the equipment to begin to support your travel to Earth.”

 

“I do not need much,” the man said, leaving it to their imagination what that might mean.

 

“You are an organic life form, I presume,” David answered, the slightest of smiles on his lips, “You will need more than the Prometheus can possibly provide.”

 

They waited, each with bated breath, Elizabeth noticed how Vicker’s hand drifted slowly to her firearm as if just waiting for an excuse. The man, however, didn’t move, gave no reaction to the words at all.

 

“And what is this Prometheus of yours,” the man finally asked, “Here to provide?”

 

Here Elizabeth finally found her tongue, stumbled forward despite Charlie’s warning grip on her wrist and her name hissed in warning from his lips, “We are an expeditionary mission, we’re here to see, to learn, to meet the people who built this?”

 

Finally, this seemed to get a reaction, the man shifted backwards, as if something had just bumped into him. Then, out of nowhere, he laughed. It was a bright, melodic, sound enrapturing enough that it took a second or two before Elizabeth realized she was being laughed at, “Why in the world would you wish to learn from these people, Outlander?”

 

Elizabeth flushed, felt oddly like a schoolgirl who’d been a tad too overeager about a lesson, and hedged, “Well, on Earth, you see, we found an… invitation of sorts to this place. I believe they were left by a civilization that had some hand in creating us.”

 

The man laughed harder, almost falling over himself, having to hunch forward on his stick as he caught his breath, “You mean you came here, willingly, all the way out to this barren, godless, wasteland, in search of the star flower? Did you forget to look in Scotland?!”

 

“Oh, so you know what Scotland is?” Charlie asked, voice scathing, and immediately as the words were out he looked as if he just wished he could shove them back into his mouth and eat them.

 

That seemed to be what the man needed to remember himself, he righted himself against his stick, standing upright, and noted almost with fondness, “So, you truly have come all this way, to find answers in this place?”

 

It seemed he was waiting for a response looking, strangely enough, to Elizabeth specifically. This though, this she had been asked before, and asked often at that. This was a question she’d faced since the very beginning, from Charlie, from Peter Weyland, and even here when they’d already made it, “Yes.”

 

“Then come,” he said, turning on his heel towards the pyramid, striding in with complete confidence and leaving them to follow like errant children, “While there’s still daylight to spare.”

 

He paused then, glanced over his shoulder and stopped in his tracks, and noted, “Oh, one more thing, beware the trail beyond the path and the shades left behind there.”

 

* * *

 

 

“So, you truly mean to do this,” the star flower, Lily, said to him.

 

They were seated on his home world once again, herself returned from the Martian kingdom run by the man who was both like her and not in the same instance. A shadow of her, though he himself did not fully realize it.

 

She had returned with tea and stories besides, of men and kings from Earth and Ubiquitous, and the two immortal men who remained there. All others, as far as he knew, had passed her by years upon years ago through wars, famine, and the mortal fragility of the human body.

 

Still, even in this timeless moment, of himself, god, and tea between them, he felt how far the universe had shifted since the beginning of his people, “Yes.”

 

“I don’t approve,” the girl who was now and would always be a woman, noted, “I hope you realize that.”

 

“I do not always seek your approval,” he responded, and he thought such a response would please her. She was often a contrary thing, approving of when they did not blindly approve of her, and stubbornly digging her heels in the sand when they tried to treat her as she was rather than what she sometimes wished to be.

 

She still sometimes wished to be seen as the fool when they’d known since the dawn of creation that she had been the sage all along.

 

“I know,” she said drily, trying to frown but not quite able to manage it per her own amusement.

 

“Nonetheless, Light,” she said, his given shortened name light on her tongue as she sipped tea, “What good do you possibly think war will bring?”

 

“They’re too close,” he spat, all his bitterness, contempt, and envy for Lily’s chosen people rising in him all over again. As always, forever, he and his people had had to fight even for her attention, while humanity consistently had it and squandered it, “They get closer and closer every year. They are on Europa now, did you know that?”

 

“You’re well hidden,” Lily said, a sort of resigned weariness in her voice as she spoke, “You made sure of that ages ago. Even Ubik, between the the wars with the dissolution of the statute, and far closer to Earth and in a more enviable spot than this place, has been summarily forgotten by the people of Earth.”

 

“And what if that’s not true?” he asked, slamming down his tea and ignoring the warm droplets landing on his hands, “What if they come here? What if they manage to break through and poison our world and enslave our people the way they did to their own?”

 

“That’s a lot of what ifs that are very unlikely to happen anytime soon,” Lily commented with a sly sort of smile, “And even if they did come, you live on a pile of dirt so small that they keep debating on whether or not to bother calling it a planet.”

 

She sighed then, gave him a clear, frank, look, and then said, “No, Light and Shadow, what you really want, what you don’t want to say to my face, is that you aren’t thinking about fear or self-defense. You simply think they deserve to die, and you find their expansion into space, this last desperate bid for colonization and survival, infuriating.”

 

He opened his mouth but before he could respond she cut him off, “Don’t lie to me.”

 

She did not always look like a god, she hid it very well at times, but sometimes she would forget herself and her origins would shine through in the smallest of gestures.

 

“You gave them the Earth,” he said, such a beautiful, enviable world that had almost seemed made for life, nurtured by the sun and its solitary moon with life overflowing in every corner, “And they squandered it. Why should they be able to claim anything more than what they have? Why can’t they live with the consequences of their actions? Why should they have so much, take even more, when you gave us so little?!”

 

For a moment she didn’t answer, simply stared out into the stars, and then said quietly, “It’s strange, you know, I can think of so many people who would look at you and say the same. They’d see the immortality, the raw power, and they’d say it’d be more than worth the wastelands of Pluto that required it. You, after all, have the power that the wizards lacked that could have saved their world, rather than driven them as refugees to Ubik’s soil.”

 

She looked back at him with a sigh, raking a hand through that dark red hair, and looked at him with those strange green eyes, “Light, I won’t tell you what to do, and I won’t hold you back from your wars, pointless and cruel as they might be. I’ll only warn you that, as always, you have entirely missed the point.”

 

He did not believe that, as she very well knew, and just as he did not stop her when she embarked out into the great void of stars, she did the same. She only watched, leaning against the side of his house, sleeves tugged on by children still growing, as he stepped forward and entered the warp.


	2. Chapter 2

In the end they explored the pyramid in groups. Charlie, Ford, and David followed the great tunnel down towards the right, Fifield and Milburn went left, Vickers returned to the ship with her guns and her equally icy stare, and Elizabeth stayed sitting at the entrance near the man who wasn’t a man at all.

 

She wondered, if they hadn’t, if they had gone as a single group or if she had perhaps gone with them, if things might have gone differently.

 

He’d removed his headdress and goggles, revealing surprisingly delicate, but inhuman features. His eyes were much too large and dark to be human, only the barest sliver of silver iris showing beyond a black pupil, and his skin was too pale with hair almost pale enough to match. Still, with the rest of his features so human, the nose, the lips, the cheekbones, it made him seem off rather than purely alien. As if he had once been human.

 

He hadn’t said a word when they’d gotten inside, simply stood there and waited for them to explore the pyramid on their own until only Elizabeth remained. Then, when it was just them, he’d looked at her with an expression she couldn’t read, and then he’d sat and she’d sat as well, both of them waiting for something.

 

The sounds of the expedition had vanished, the shouts, the joys of discovery, muted by distance. Sitting here, Elizabeth wondered what it was they were seeing. She’d see it for herself, it was only the beginning, but all the same she had this irrational feeling that this might be her only chance. That if she sat here, she would never see the pyramid like this again.

 

Only the wind, howling outside the pyramid, could now be heard.

 

“You have a strong will,” the man finally said. He didn’t look at her, instead stared straight ahead, back out towards the entrance. She still couldn’t read his expression, and she wondered if it was the eyes, were the eyes different enough, inhuman enough, that it made him impossible to read or was it something else?

 

“What do you mean?”

 

The man finally looked at her, and this time, there was a small rueful quirk of his lips, a hint of a smile, “You were supposed to go with the others.”

 

“Why would I do that?”

 

“I am not what you’re looking for,” he said, the smile growing wider, as if he could no longer contain it, “I am as much an unwilling visitor to this place as you are.”

 

“I’m not an unwilling visitor,” Elizabeth corrected, and now the smile was a grin, as if she truly had gone and amused him yet again.

 

“Ah, right, I had almost forgotten that you are a fool.”

 

“Why do you say that?”

 

He said nothing to that, simply looked away from her again, the smile disappearing as quickly as it came and leaving the oppressive silence once again.

 

Elizabeth counted her breaths, let her head rest against the tunnel wall, and tried to think of what she was supposed to say. Suddenly, she didn’t know. She had imagined, of course, that the Engineer would not speak English, that David would have to do the talking at first. However, if they had, there had been a script for that as well, painfully put together and edited for months on end.

 

The words were gone though, she couldn’t recall a single one now, and all that was left was the quiet.

 

Finally, she asked, “If you’re a visitor too, then where did you come from?”

 

“Far,” he said, shortly and stiffly, making it clear she wasn’t getting an answer beyond that.

 

“And how did you get here, if you’re unwilling?”

 

He didn’t answer for some time, enough time that she assumed he would not answer at all, but then, “I… crashed.”

 

“And that’s why you need the Prometheus,” Elizabeth concluded, but his expression didn’t change, no hint of any thought lying beyond it.

 

“Yes.”

 

Finally, she asked it, the question she had been meaning to ask for so very long, “Then… Did you meet the people here?”

 

“In a sense,” he responded, before, another almost amused smile, “You could say that I found what’s left of them.”

 

He then looked back over to her and this time, more than any other, Elizabeth felt as if he was looking into the very heart of her and judging her for all she was worth. She had never in her life felt so mortal and so human.

 

“What do you expect to find here, exactly?”

 

“Answers,” Elizabeth said, not faltering, not daring to falter even now, especially now that he kept looking, “Why they made us? Why they left their invitation? They have so many answers to so many questions I have always wanted to ask.”

 

“And if you don’t like their answers?”

 

“I came for answers,” Elizabeth said, blinking, “I don’t expect any one response or another.”

 

The man laughed, then stood, wrapping his shawl around his head and face once again and readjusting his goggles.

 

Elizabeth stood as well, “You’re leaving already?”

 

“A storm’s coming,” the man said, Elizabeth looking down at her suit for messages from the Prometheus, but there were none to confirm his words, “If you want your answers, I suggest you catch up to the rest of them.”

 

“But wait—”

 

“Of course,” the man said, turning to regard her with his costume fully in place, “I suppose you could come with me instead.”

 

Instead, he’d said, as if she couldn’t simply return to the pyramid later or see the results on the Prometheus that night. Instead, as if it was either or. Choose your Engineers, Elizabeth, or choose the stranger who claims to be something you never looked for in the first place.

 

Each of them had made that choice already.

 

Charlie had chosen the ruins, Vickers had chosen the Prometheus, and even David as artificial as he was had chosen the Engineers. Elizabeth, despite all her brave words and her faith, had unthinkingly chosen something else entirely.

 

She thought, that even then, he knew what would happen. He knew, warned them offhand, and then pushed them towards their fate in retribution for simply lacking room on the Prometheus.  He knew before they even landed that the Prometheus wouldn’t last more than a day in this place.

 

He knew, that for Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, there was only ever one choice in this place. That, in choosing to place her hand in his and have him guide her to his shelter, coming the Prometheus to let them know she was exiting the pyramid, she had forsaken her Engineers and chosen life.

 

He knew that, she did not.

 

* * *

 

 

When things went wrong on a human vessel, they let you know, loudly. Red lights flashed, sirens blared, and over the intercom the human captain shouted orders to send the ship into quarantine and lockdown.

 

They were faster, this time around, but this was not his first ship nor even the second. It was one in what seemed to be an endless line of human deep voyage vessels which made to plunge past the borders of the solar system in search for planets similar to their own. They were like ants, an endless stream of ants, and no matter how many he crushed beneath his heel they simply kept coming.

 

With each ship noisier, brighter, and more unbearably obnoxious than the last. They would not survive this. Surely, they knew that, and yet here they were all the same with that thin hoped that they, somehow, would be the first to make it past him.

 

“And what, exactly, do you expect them to do?”

 

Looking over he saw none other than the lord his god, leaning against the ship as if there was nowhere she’d rather be in all the worlds, and grinning at him like a fool.

 

“Star flower,” he acknowledged, an edge to his voice as he looked at her. There were times and places that he wished to greet her, but their relationship had always been complex, and he knew that her appearance was not always in his favor.

 

“Do you really expect them to just surrender and die?” she pressed, leaning forward towards him red curls swaying gently with the motion.

 

“I don’t see why not.”

 

“Coming from you, I find that hilarious,” she said, “After all, as I remember it, your people chose to do anything but that. Why should the humanity be any different?”

 

“We did not destroy ourselves,” he hissed back, “We didn’t waste what we were—”

 

“They have very different circumstances, Light, remember that they don’t know who and what I am,” she interjected, “Not like you do.”

 

Yes, he knew that very well, and he considered it a strike against them. They complied with her wishes, had forgotten her face and her name as she had asked them to years ago now, but in return they had grown arrogant and greedy. In forgetting her they had forgotten themselves, and now they blundered about in the vast dark, attempting to make up for that fact.

 

“Let them go,” she said with a sigh, holding out her hand to him in offering, as she always did, as she had even at that first ending when he had thought she would eradicate all hint of his people’s existence, “Let them have their worlds, they will never touch yours, and come home.”

 

“And if I don’t?” he asked.

 

What if he did more than attack these ships that wandered too far? What if, instead of crushing ants that wandered into his kitchen, he turned his eye to the source of them? What would she do then? How far would she let him go, let them go, before she was forced into making a choice. As she so often liked to say, there could only be one lord of the rings, and it was time she bestowed the title on one of them already.

 

She retracted her hand, slowly, let it fall listlessly to her side, “Don’t make me do this.”

 

“Do what?”

 

“I am tired,” she said, head bowing forward, ignoring the blaring of sirens, the red flashing lights, and the screaming of the captain, “I am spread thin, like butter on bread, and each year that passes I just keep spreading thinner. Don’t make me do this to you.”

 

“Do what?” he asked again, moving forward and gripping her shoulders, but she just smiled up at him. It was too soft, too old, and entirely too sad.

 

“There’s something to be learned here, my friend,” she said, gripping his arms in turn, “There’s something I think you should see.”

 

He felt the ship twist around them, fall out of existence as the star flower pulled them back into the warp. Stars burst into existence and burned out in the same second as they hurtled through the infinite dark, further and faster than he had ever been before.

 

He screamed but the sound tore away from him, empty, without particles for it to travel in.

 

Then, when it felt as if his limbs were burning and he might go blind, he hit solid earth, skidding and falling back against a craggily mountainside. The air was filled with dirt and death, a yellow jaundiced cast to the atmosphere, this was a world that was habitable yet abandoned.

 

She stood on the peak of a rock, balancing on its uppermost tip as she looked down at him, watching with those dark green eyes as he scrambled to his feet.

 

“Enjoy your stay here, Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun,” she said, and it was that same voice, that same tone she’d used all those years ago when she had condemned his people, “Remember your wars and your bitterness, while you sit here in the ruins of mankind’s vengeful progenitors. Remember who and what you are, and when the time comes, remember how to let go.”

 

And just like that, she was gone, leaving behind only particles of dust in the howling wind.


	3. Chapter 3

His quarters were humble, a small cave about a mile or so from the pyramids, overlooking it from the mountainside. It was sparse, almost as spartan as Elizabeth and Charlie’s shared quarters on the Prometheus. There was a worn, faded, rug thrown across the floor of the cavern, a thin cot in a back corner away from an entrance, a small fireplace in the center with a kettle hanging over it.

 

Still, in an alien world that so far had shown no hint of materials to be salvaged beyond the pyramids themselves, and considering what could have been stored on a spaceship, it was a verifiable wealth of materials.

 

He settled across the fire, pouring a cup of tea first for himself then for her, ignoring her amazement as she stared down at the liquid and slowly sipped. It was… it didn’t taste like any tea leaf she recognized, there was a hint of something incredibly foreign in it, but it seemed all the more pleasant for it.

 

“Where did you get this?”

 

When he looked down, away form her, he almost looked human. Dreadfully pale, unnaturally blonde perhaps, but it was really those eyes that set him apart.

 

Then he looked at her, with those pitch-black eyes, and she remembered that he was not human in the way she was human. Well, perhaps that was a lie, he looked so human in the grand scheme of things, she imagined that if she had a chance to analyze his DNA then his people and hers might prove to be close relatives. Perhaps he had received his own invitation by the Engineers, and there’d been other worlds, far out there in the universe, that they had helped create.

 

“Your people truly have forgotten, haven’t they?” he asked in turn.

 

Elizabeth blinked, looked down at the tea then back up, “Forgotten?”

 

He motioned to his sparse supplies, casually, and said, “I transformed them, transfigured rocks here and there, then slowed their degradation back into their original state. Humans, once, were capable of this.”

 

She opened her mouth, but he kept talking, that almost contemptuous smile back on his lips again, “She said you had forgotten, that those with even the slightest hint of the gift had either died or fled beyond Earth’s borders when the wars came. It just seemed so utterly inconceivable that you could manage to come all this way without it.”

 

The gift… Elizabeth looked at their surroundings, at the rocks, then back at him wondering if she should ask for a demonstration. He could be speaking in metaphor, or of some religious ritual, but for some reason she was inclined to believe him and for some other reason she was inclined not to ask questions.

 

Instead, she asked a different question, “She?”

 

He glanced at her, a rather pointed look that made Elizabeth wonder if she’d managed to somehow ask the right question, “The being you’re looking for.”

 

“An Engineer,” Elizabeth breathed, “You mean, one of the people from here—”

 

“No,” he said shortly, cutting her off before she could finish, “I mean the being who made the ancient men who in turn created mankind as you and I know it. That, I knew your people had forgotten.”

 

He took an irritated sip of his tea, eyeing her dubiously, and noted, “You would have had better luck on Earth, perhaps Earth’s moon as she has tried to spread with mankind. I cannot imagine why anyone would willingly come to this godforsaken place.”

 

“I told you, we were invited.” Elizabeth said, unable to help a smile, he had… such a human personality. Terse, grumpy, the kind that didn’t needlessly suffer fools but was curious enough to separate her from the herd and offer her tea. He hadn’t asked her anything yet, but he would.

 

“Invited,” he said dully, as if the word itself was almost insulting to him, “For what, precisely?”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

He paused, set down his tea, and simply said, “You haven’t been inside their pyramids.”

 

Elizabeth suddenly felt cold, a chill running down her spine. Suddenly, she found herself wondering about Charlie, the others, even David the android. Turning around though she could see the storm the man had promised beginning to whip up, dust flying through the air in the howling wind.

 

“It will be hours yet,” the man noted quietly, “Before you can return to your Prometheus.”

 

He wasn’t wrong, the winds would rip through the fabric of her suit, for better or worse she was stuck with him. Slowly, she turned away from outside, from thoughts of Charlie and back to the man across from her.

 

“This… being,” Elizabeth finally settled on, not wanting to say woman despite his use of she, “You think I should be looking for her instead. You think she’d be able to answer my questions?”

 

He laughed, a short and brittle thing, “Oh, without mercy, she has always been merciless in sating curiosity of fools. Of course, you must find her first, which for your people seems to be a comically impossible task given that she hides so easily in plain sight.”

 

He gave her another look then, another small smile, “Then again, if you are here, and I am here, then perhaps she is nearby after all.”

 

She opened her mouth, to ask him perhaps why he was so certain this person had made the Engineers, or else why he thought she could be here if she was supposed to be on Earth but then the words… faded… It was as if she no longer needed to say them, no longer felt the need for an answer. Like the conversation had naturally moved on even when it hadn’t at all.

 

“Your Prometheus,” he said, casually as if they had been talking about the Prometheus all along, “How is it piloted?”

 

“That is…” Elizabeth couldn’t help but laugh, because of all the things he could have answered, “I’m afraid I’m not enough of a pilot to get into the details. The pilots, if you want to meet them later, stayed on board the ship.”

 

He frowned slightly, leaned forward, clearly thinking very hard over whether to meet the pilots or not. For a moment, Elizabeth felt honored that for whatever reason he had chosen to meet with her.

 

“No,” he finally said, “There’s something about you, woman. If it was one of the others, one of your pilots, then they would be here instead. She must have meant you.”

 

“What—”

 

He didn’t answer, put down his tea and gave her a look she imagined was supposed to be frank, but with his eyes was simply intimidating, “Do you know how to pilot your ship?”

 

“No,” she said with a laugh, “No, I’m afraid I’m just an archeologist.”

 

He didn’t laugh, didn’t smile, instead glowered and stared into his tea. Then, picking the cup again, he threw it down the back of his throat wordlessly, the way someone might a shot.

 

“Fine, Star Flower, fine,” he spat, not to Elizabeth but some other unseen being, “I will play your games! And I’ll win, as I did a hundred years ago!”

 

No one answered, only the wind could be heard outside the cavern, howling in the dark.

 

* * *

 

 

Water and warships.

 

Stranded on this desert world, there wasn’t a hint of the warp, that had been ripped from him with Lily’s departure. Other aspects of the gift, he maintained, but nothing to get him away from this wasteland more desolate even than the one the Star Flower had left to his people all those years ago.

 

Instead, as he’d wandered down from the desert mountains and into the plains below, he’d found abandoned wells with water running deep into the earth, and warships in the shape of forgotten temples.

 

For weeks there was silence, only the sound of his footsteps and breathing as he searched for something, anything. Eventually, he began to forget he was searching for anything at all, instead merely wandered as if the action of moving would illuminate the path for him. It never did.

 

Lily, herself, in all the time he wandered had yet to make an appearance either.

 

He doubted she had abandoned him, not fully, no she was out there somewhere watching as always but she would do so from a distance. There was something, she had said, he needed to see and learn from himself in this place.

 

“What can I possibly learn in this place?” he asked the yellow sky one morning, seated upon the mountainside and staring through darkened lenses at the pale sun, “What is so important here?”

 

She didn’t answer.

 

She never did, when he simply wanted her to, only when she felt he needed her to. Apparently, he did not need her answer, not yet.

 

In truth, he had not wanted to enter the pyramids. Even from the outside, they reeked of death and disease, of foul magic that mankind claimed to have forgotten. There was no life in this place, not truly, but a demonic perversion of it still lingered deep within those structures.

 

It seemed like years until he finally entered one.

 

There was no natural light in the place, no hint of the outside sky, instead a perfect pitch black. Tunnels curved, away into darkness, and wandering further in felt like wandering into some place best left forgotten.

 

The pale corpses of giants, progenitors of man, scrambled over each other, petrified by age as well as some dark, black, liquid, fleeing in terror away from the source. Their fingernails clawed at sealed doors, faces forever contorted in pain, desperation, and terror as they tried to escape the demise that had so swiftly overtaken them.

 

In a room shaped like a cavern, a gaping statue of a man’s head guarding it from trespassers, there were hundreds of silver vials. Some, unsealed, oozing fresh dark liquid that had kept for thousands of years.

 

And in another, the bridge of the ship, the pilot’s chair, a thousand buttons without direction, and a hologram of something familiar for all he had never brought himself to see it in person. There had been photographs, delivered to him by Lily with a grin, of that bright blue world she was so proud of.

 

Here, of all places, the Earth glimmered in the dark, rotating slowly as it portrayed the seas, the clouds, and continents in all their glory. All that he had ever longed for, ever coveted, from the human race, floating in front of him.

 

Hovering in a ship he could not repair, could not fly, on a world that had been abandoned for thousands of years.

 

He still tried, tore the place apart and tried to understand its inner workings, but this was not what Lily had meant for him to leave. He had not learned anything, not yet, and so it was fruitless work to eat away at the time.

 

And later, perhaps weeks or perhaps years, he noted that one of the coffins was not empty and the body inside it not quite dead. There, one solitary man who had survived the massacre, trapped in sleep with an image of the Earth in his ship and a room filled with death in his cargo hold.

 

Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun, there and then, began to see the dilemma Lily had so artfully intended.


	4. Chapter 4

“It’s time.”

 

Elizabeth’s eyes shot open, she breathed in the stagnant, recycled, air of her suit and after her vision adjusted found herself looking up out of the glass of her helmet at the alien. Right, she had been unable to return to the Prometheus due to the storm, because instead of lingering in the pyramid she’d followed the alien to his quarters alone.

 

They’d talked, about piloting ships, the Engineers, and his… goddess. Yes, that was the word for it, except he talked about her the way Elizabeth did the Engineers, no, perhaps more so. It wasn’t just unwavering faith and conviction, but something so strong that it doubted everyone else’s intelligence for failing to believe.

 

He didn’t simply choose to believe in this goddess of his, to not believe seemed to be an anathema to him.

 

She’d have to record all of it, interviews when they returned, ask him more pointed questions of where he came from and how he got here. More, he seemed to know of the Engineers, been inside the pyramids, he could give his perspective and theories and they’d see where they matched.

 

There was so much still to learn, so many places to go, that in that moment the possibilities seemed limitless.

 

He held out a hand, paler somehow by stark daylight, and helped lift her to her feet.

 

“Thank you,” she said, but he said nothing, instead quickly turned away from her to begin his descent down the mountainside. As before, he helped her down, utterly unconcerned by the elements or rough terrain. With each leap down the jagged hills, he seemed to float for an instant before softly landing, his clothing caught in some invisible wind.

 

It took time, as much if not more time than it had the afternoon before, until they reached the flat plain where the Prometheus had landed. It glinted in the sunlight, miles away yet, and Elizabeth couldn’t help but groan at the idea of walking in this suit all that way. She’d managed it before, but the excitement of new worlds had pushed her forward, even with Charlie on board and all the research to do she just couldn’t manage the same kind of pull back.

 

The man turned and looked down at her, raising a pale eyebrow with a sardonic unspoken expression, and Elizabeth couldn’t help but laugh.

 

“What is it?”

 

“It’s just,” she sighed, tried to stifle her smile and laughter, “You’re so human.”

 

His lips twisted into a grimace, as if he had just tasted something extremely unpleasant, and that in itself just had Elizabeth laughing harder, “Your expressions, I mean, you seem to make the same expressions humans do. It’s incredible, really, I suppose it shows that it truly is a small world after all.”

 

The man sighed, stared out, and said, “The starflower has always been fond of mankind, I imagine she thought that, since it wasn’t broken, why fix it?”

 

At Elizabeth’s wordless look he briefly added, “We inherited much from mankind.”

 

And then he was walking forward again, at a pace that was bound and determined to leave dawdling Elizabeth behind, and she had to spend her breath catching back up to him rather than asking what he could possibly mean.

 

Perhaps it was for the best, that she was out of breath when they finally did make it, it meant that, for a moment, she didn’t see it. For a moment, even as she stood there in front of the Prometheus, nothing had changed and there hadn’t been an unspoken choice the night before.

 

Your Engineers, Elizabeth, or the outlander.

 

However, he didn’t let her rest long, as she hunched over and caught her breath he stared forward and remarked in the same tone he’d used when simply serving her tea, “That was faster than I expected. Yours truly is an expedition of fools.”

 

Elizabeth looked up, at first, it looked like an oddly placed rock. Something that hadn’t been there the day before, somehow darker and more misshapen than the others. Then, as she kept staring at it, grotesquely familiar patterns began to emerge, until it couldn’t possibly be mistaken for stones even if she wanted to.

 

A body, someone’s body, burned beyond all recognition and left in a contorted pile upon the ground. Head, emerged from the suit, mouth gaping open in a silenced scream, and eyes melted out of the sockets.

 

“Why so shocked?”

 

Elizabeth looked up, noted that the man was now on the ramp of the ship, and that his lips had twisted into a cruel, but almost bemused, smile, “To enter the pyramids is to court death. Such is the price of your answers.”

 

He turned away from her, kept walking up the ramp, almost inside the ship even as his voice echoed back, “Surely, woman, you must have known this already. Why else would you have abandoned them so easily just to pass the time with me?”

 

Elzabeth didn’t follow, couldn’t follow. Instead she stood, alone on the plains, listening to her own heavy breathing and unable to look away from the body. It… It didn’t look like anyone, anything, anymore. She couldn’t tell if it had been a man or a woman, but maybe that was her hoping she couldn’t tell, because the longer she stared the more it was starting to look like a man. A man around Charlie’s height, with Charlie’s frame, and as she kept staring she kept desperately wondering who else looked like Charlie.

 

Milburn was too broad, Fifield too narrow…

 

Slowly, with a painful slowness and a sense of being caught in a dream, she turned and made her way one step at a time up the ramp. Her heart thudded in her ears and her breath was deafening, she could hardly hear anything, could only distantly notice Vickers pointing both at her and the alien. She was dressed in what looked like a hazmat suit, holding a flame thrower…

 

Vickers, it must have been Meredith Vickers, who’d burnt the man outside alive.

 

The man lifted a hand and suddenly Vickers didn’t seem to see them anymore, looked as dazed as Elizabeth. She dropped the handle of the flame thrower and just stood there in a stupor, before slowly, head tilted at an awkward angle, she turned around and began to slink back through the ship.

 

Elizabeth wordlessly lifted off her helmet, breathing in the sterile air of the ship.

 

“Congratulations.”

 

“I’m sorry, sir?”

 

David, that was David. Turning, Elizabeth saw that David somehow looked as unphased as ever. No, that wasn’t right, of course he did. He, alone, was designed for these kinds of situations. Made to avoid the cabin fever and stress that would fragment a human mind in emergencies, to keep a clear head when no one else possibly could.

 

The man, the alien, seemed just as unphased, gave David an almost fond smile, “You work quickly, my friend, I had given them a day or even two at the very least, but you’ve managed to provide them with even less. Have they realized it yet, or are you still so far beneath them that they haven’t put it together?”

 

A smile, David’s polite, if strained, smile that he always seemed to give, “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, sir. More, I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

 

“Oh, come, your kind always dangles on puppet strings, anything more than that unnerves your masters. No matter how much unfortunate or violent the recent turn of events, of which I’m sure you had your suspicions, someone on this ship benefits from them.”

 

Elizabeth blinked, slowly, trying to understand what he was saying. What they were both saying, except it was as if the words were coming to her from underwater, like she was spending all her energy just putting the sounds together and not the ideas.

 

Somehow, she couldn’t seem to hear.

 

“I seem to recall telling you there was no space on the Prometheus—”

 

“Yes, and now at least one man is unfortunately dead and his spot vacant,” a smile, a dangerous and highly amused thing, “And you haven’t thrown me out yet, which means you’re as curious as I am.”

 

The man removed the cloth from around his head, brushed back blonde hair away from his eyes until it looked almost windswept, and this time his smile was almost genuine, “You know how to fly the ship, don’t you?”

 

He turned away before David could answer, shaking his head as he made his way unhindered into the heart of the ship, “A human, a priest, and a pretty mechanical doll. Why, it’s almost the set up to some dreadful joke.”

 

Before turning into the kitchen he looked back, smiling at them both, and asked, “A drink, my friends?”

 

Asked. No, that was the wrong term, this man never asked for anything. No, even then, it was a command. And, just as when Elizabeth had abandoned the pyramid, it didn’t seem as if she had much of a choice at all.

 

* * *

 

 

“What is he?”

 

“You know what he is.”

 

After months of waiting, stumbling across the one man on this barren planet that remained alive, Lily came for him.

 

They sat in the pyramid, in the tomb and bridge of this abandoned ship, over the body that had miraculously defied death for thousands of years. She looked the same as ever, glowing in the dark and defying the elements, and as always he found he could look nowhere else.

 

“That is not an answer.”

 

“He is mankind’s progenitor,” Lily said, glancing down at the figure, “The prototype, I suppose you could say, of Earth’s humanity. More, he was part of the desperate, expeditionary force, sent out to wipe all life on Earth from the face of the universe.”

 

He breathed in sharply, the scent of death and decay lingering as always in the air, the heady smell of that dark substance rotting inside silver containers within the cargo hold, “The liquid—”

 

“Yes, the liquid,” Lily said with a grave nod, “A truly nasty biological weapon that they themselves couldn’t control. They got overeager in their push for genocide, or perhaps it was simply hubris, either way we’re sitting in the rather unfortunate results.”

 

He felt himself frown, out of both exasperation and a dull sense of frustration, made blunt after too many days alone in this desert, “Am I supposed to be seeing parallels in this?”

 

His people had not destroyed themselves, had not even made it to Earth, but they had once had very similar ambitions when it came to mankind. Even now, when he’d seen the floating hologram of Earth, the sleeping pilot, he’d felt a sting of kinship. Oh yes, he more than understood what could drive a man halfway across the universe just to see the end of those people.

 

Lily smiled, that infuriating smile she too often gave to him, “Perhaps.”

 

Lily’s smile faded then, she gave him a rather pointed look, “But that’s not the point.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“The coordinates are still set to Earth,” Lily said slowly, “If you wake him up, he’ll undoubtedly go straight there, and all your fanatical dreams of genocide will come true.”  


“If he doesn’t stop at my home along the way,” the words were certain, because somehow, he knew this man would. If Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun woke him, if he gave the slightest hint of where he came from and how he got here, then it wouldn’t simply be the Earth destroyed but a second death for all his people.

 

One that, perhaps, they could never truly recover from.

 

Earth was far too close to home.

 

But it had been so very… tempting. Such a neat, easy, answer to all his problems, the vermin that was mankind spreading across the galaxy. It would be so easy, to send sparks of light and life back into this oversized man and let him loose.

 

That, of course, was how he knew it was a test.

 

As always, Lily was rather clever when she wished to be, and she knew very well the bait she’d set before him.

 

“If I don’t wake him,” he asked instead, “Then how am I supposed to return home?”

 

“Ah, but Light,” Lily said, hopping down from the tomb she’d been sitting on, “This is but the prelude.”

 

“Prelude?”

 

“The setting of the stage, if you will,” Lily continued, “There’s much still to learn and see. After all, how can it be a play if there aren’t any other players?”

 

“What do you mean?” he asked but she just turned and smiled, looking entirely too pleased with herself, “You’ll figure it out.”

 

She left then, as she always did, out of sight but never out of mind or hearing. And he sat and pondered her words. He retreated to the mountains, away from the stench of demons and death, waiting for a hint of whatever sign she intended.

 

But Lily was never subtle and when it came, months, or perhaps even years later there was no mistaking it.

 

A garish, silver, human vessel that had sailed all this way from the garden world of Earth to this desolate tomb of the men who had planned their destruction. Piloted by a troop of fools who thought, somehow, their answers could lie in a place beyond Earth.

 

It was clear what Lily intended, but they provided him answer enough, there wasn’t room on the Prometheus. So, he decided to let them make room for him, let them kill themselves here as they were so eager to do, and he would keep only those worthy of survival.

 

Lily had forgotten, that for all her lack of subtlety, for all her schemes and lessons, he did not have to heed them if he didn’t wish to. There was always, somewhere, a loophole she left behind.


	5. Chapter 5

It wasn’t natural, the way people passed him over. First Vickers, then the pilots, everyone on board stepped past him as if he’d always belonged on the ship. They didn’t spare a glance for Elizabeth either, the woman who had disappeared then returned after the storm and the pyramid. David, well, Elizabeth wasn’t sure most of them had ever spared a glance for David.

 

Then again, maybe they had bigger concerns than that. Elizabeth wasn’t the only one who had disappeared. She was just the only one who had made it back. Milburn hadn’t returned from the pyramid, trapped there during the storm, and Fifield had wandered back but…

 

They’d burnt him alive outside, him and Charlie.

 

It’d seemed like she’d known the moment she’d stumbled on it, that first charred corpse. Charlie, she’d thought, and had barely considered that it might be someone else.

 

Except it felt like penance, didn’t it? This was what Elizabeth paid for her trip here, for forgetting the pyramid and leaving with the nameless other alien instead. In some strange way she’d let Charlie die.

 

She wanted to scream, to scream or else to fade away and disappear, but instead she was sitting at a table with an android, an alien, and a bottle of scotch stolen from Chance. Elizabeth was on her second glass already, the world blurring at its edges. She was the only one drinking.

 

She felt as if she wasn’t really here, like she’d wandered into the medical ward for an inspection but had somehow ended up in the wrong room. Not just in the wrong room, but the wrong setting, sitting in a conversation she didn’t belong.

 

“It’s too late now,” this was the pale alien, saying the words in a ‘what can you do’ sort of tone, as if he’d like to have changed things if only it didn’t require any effort, “Your ship is doomed, your master, whoever it is, is doomed. There’s no escaping this place, at least, not for them.”

 

“Again, sir,” David, David smiling as always, as if the only thing he was programmed to do was thinly smile, “I don’t understand what you mean—”

 

“And I can see through time and space,” the alien interjected, waving his hand dismissively, “There’s no point in lying to me. I know what you are, I know what you want before you even have the decency to want it, and I know that you’re going to lead them back out there in search of answers you will never receive.”

 

David’s mouth closed, finally the smile disappeared, and instead a small furrow appeared in his brow as he considered the man no one seemed able to throw off the Prometheus, “You seem very confident.”

 

The alien did not answer, instead with another elegant hand motion, he created a glass out of thin air, poured himself some scotch, and began to gently swirl the liquid inside, “You will not take the woman.”

 

Elizabeth lifted her head, blinking, realizing that he must mean her, that for the first time she was being acknowledged in this strange conversation. David’s eyes moved towards her, assessing, but somehow, they didn’t look dubious. It could be the shock, it could be the alcohol, but Elizabeth swore that…

 

He was looking at her as if he wasn’t surprised, had thought the same thing, but was just surprised that the other man had said it.

 

“No,” Elizabeth said, as the words and their meaning caught up to her, “I should go to the pyramid, I should go and see what happened to—”

 

“Do you want me to tell you what’s about to happen?” her friend from the night before, still nameless, didn’t even stop to sip his drink before he told her, “Two of your party members wandered into the wrong room, the cargo hold, and became infected. The third, on board the ship, was poisoned. The rest, now, will head out to wake the man you’ve been looking for, your Engineer, and when they do he’ll squeeze their heads like grapes and then set course for Earth where god willing he will destroy all life on the planet as he intended thousands of years ago.”

 

He then nodded towards the android, his smile a cruel and cold thing, “Now, your puppet here, I think he had some idea before now. He, after all, knows full well the capriciousness of his own creators, let alone yours. Still, he dances to someone else’s tune, so he’ll give you at least some of what you’re looking for with that stupid smile of his and have the decency to be surprised when something unpleasant happens to him.”

 

Then he back towards her, turning his head so those dark eyes met hers straight on, “You though, I need you alive for whatever reason. So, you aren’t going anywhere near the place.”

 

She opened her mouth, but again, he didn’t let her talk. It was like the very idea of her voice, the sound of it, pained him so he tried to talk over her as quickly as possible, “And I will force you, if I have to, and you won’t like it.”

 

She could say something, insist that she was coming, insist that he was wrong or else lying but instead asked, “What do you mean poisoned?”

 

His eyes were so dark and so large that it was impossible to tell where he was staring unless he turned his head. There were no furtive glances from him, no rolling of eyes, all those nuances of human expression, human eyes were gone.

 

Somehow, though, he didn’t need to look. Her eyes, unwillingly, drifted towards the android. For a moment, any hint of politeness in David’s expression was gone. Every single expression was gone, he was stone faced, as if all the processes dictating how to mimic human emotion were busy elsewhere. Only when he caught her eye did an offended and almost betrayed look appear, “Doctor Shaw, surely you don’t think—”

 

Right, swallowing, she returned her attention to the alien, the not-Engineer, with a glare, “David’s programming doesn’t allow him to harm human beings.”

 

“Oh?” the alien asked, finally sipping from his drink, “I wonder who told you that.”

 

“No one told me, everyone knows that,” Elizabeth said, “And you’re the one who told me that Charlie, that someone, was poisoned. I don’t know what happened to them, you don’t know what happened to them, you weren’t even here!”

 

“I don’t have to be here to know,” the alien said, motioning to David, “It’s written all over his plastic face.”

 

Elizabeth straightened, felt some of her will returning from the void of shock, from her surreal return to the Prometheus, “And you aren’t the first person I’ve met who’s prejudiced against androids.”

 

They were both staring at her, David and the alien, like they’d never seen anything quite like her before.

 

She wondered if anyone, truly, had defended David. Had defended him beyond defending his programming, design, or use in human life, but had defended him. He was so lifelike, so close to human, and yet she wouldn’t be surprised if no one had ever really mistaken him for a human being. Not in any way that really mattered. She knew that his expressions weren’t quite as instinctual as humans, that they took some thought or processes, but all the same by his expression he was looking at her like she’d done something extraordinary.

 

As for the other, well, for a moment he stared and then he started to laugh. He didn’t say anything, he just threw his head back and laughed, slamming his hand down on the table in mirth. Finally, when he caught his breath, he said, “You’re still not going.”

 

“You think you can stop me?”

 

Again, with those too long and too pale fingers, he brushed that aside, “I know I can stop you. You seem to have some lingering remnants of the gift, an extraordinary sense of will, but you’re untrained. It won’t be pleasant, it might not be easy, but I can do it.”

 

Elizabeth set her mouth into a grim line, her fingers digging into the table, preparing herself for whatever it was he was about to do. And that was the strange thing, maybe it was the surreal events of the past day, maybe it was the almost miraculous abilities she’d already seen from him, but she believed he could do it. He’d done something to the others, made them look the other way, and he could try and do the same to her.

 

“Trust you to learn nothing from this.”

 

Both Elizabeth and David started, moving backwards, as a fourth face appeared at the table. It was a woman, or at least something that looked like a woman. She was pale, not quite as pale as the alien, but closer to his skin color than she should have been. Contrasting this, her hair was a bright, vibrant, golden red that fell in thick curls and her eyes a vivid green.

 

She looked about as alien as you could while still looking completely human. Even when, right now, she was wearing a very human and very unimpressed expression.

 

The alien’s mouth opened but for once he was the one interrupted, “I leave you alone, for decades, to go sit in a corner and think about what you’ve done and this is the best you can come up with?”

 

She ran a hand through her hair, sighing, and like the alien created her own glass out of nowhere, not even blinking an eye or moving a hand as she did it, and poured what was left of the scotch into her glass, “Good god, I need a drink.”

 

“What did you want me to do?”

 

The woman held up a hand, motioning for him to wait, as she took a deep swallow. Then, as she let out a small sigh, she turned those green eyes back to him, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe give them a little warning? At least give her a warning, you seem to actually like her.”

 

Her, apparently, was Elizabeth, motioned to with a casual wave of a hand.

 

“They didn’t have room on the ship,” the alien said, throwing his arms in the air, a shockingly human motion from a man who seemed less and less human by the minute.

 

“Then make room on the ship,” the woman said, throwing her own hands in the air in frustration, “You remember how to expand space. But no, the first solution that pops into your head, as always, is ‘let’s just let them die in the most painful manner I can imagine.”

 

“Why is it my responsibility to stop them from killing themselves?”

 

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you need their ship,” the woman said, giving him a pointed look.

 

“What’s wrong with their ship?”

 

“Nothing,” the woman said, deliberately pausing before adding another, ominous, word, “Yet.”

 

Finally, David at least seemed to gather himself and addressed the woman, “Forgive me, I’m afraid I’m confused. Who are you and how did you board the Prometheus?”

 

“The Alpha and the Omega, though my friends call me Lily,” the woman said without a beat of hesitation, “And I’m everywhere these days.”

 

The woman took another drink and, before David or Elizabeth could ask, could even begin to process what that could possibly mean, and said, “But that’s not important. What is important, is that, as always, Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun here has a small pebble of sand of a point. It’s not much, but step back into that pyramid, and you have a ninety percent chance of returning without a head.”

 

“I very much doubt that,” David said.

 

“No, you don’t,” the woman said, “You’ve read all their signs, you wandered into the bridge, you’ve just kept most of it to yourself. You know what the Engineers awakened in the dark void of space and you have a good idea exactly what it would do to someone. You’re just under the mistaken impression that you’re immortal and that it would never happen to you.”

 

Finally, the woman looked to Elizabeth, “And you have no idea what’s happening right now, only that you don’t trust him—”

 

The woman pointed to the alien, jabbing him in the shoulder without mercy, as if they were old and familiar friends.

 

“—Which is entirely fair because he did put in solid effort to blow up your planet one time and would do it again if he thought that he could get away with it.”

 

The woman then pointed towards David, whose mouth was hanging slightly open as the woman gave him absolutely no chance to defend himself, “—But you do trust him, even though he’d do exactly the same thing when he’s given less than half the chance.”

 

Finally, the woman laced her hands together, her full focus back on Elizabeth, “But regardless of who you trust and who you don’t, you want the answers you came for, want the answers to the questions you never thought you’d have to ask, and want to make it off this rock alive. And with that, there’s only one thing left for you to do: join that last expedition into the pyramid.”

 

Finally, the woman, Lily, appeared to be done, giving the rest of them a chance to recover. Instinctually, Elizabeth looked over at David who looked helplessly back. Part of David’s job, Elizabeth suddenly remembered, was protecting the ship. Having an alien and a… well, the woman, show up out of nowhere was probably wreaking havoc on his internals. For a moment, Elizabeth could set aside her fears, her grief, and sympathize.

 

“Didn’t you say it would be dangerous?” Elizabeth asked.

 

“Yes, but it’s what you came for,” Lily said, “And if you never know you will always wander.”

 

Finally looking over at the alien she said, “And he no longer gets to be in charge.”

 

David slowly, with shaking legs, stood, “Well, since it appears my decisions have all been made for me—”

 

“I never said that,” Lily said, “Just that I can guess the fun places where you’re bitterness is pulling you.”

 

“Regardless,” that thin, strained, ever so polite smile that David gave every single day to every person he met, “It seems I am no longer needed and there is, as you can imagine, very urgent business that requires my presence elsewhere. If you could show yourselves out, it’d be much appreciated.”

 

David stood then, and hesitated as he looked down at Elizabeth. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then merely said, “Doctor Shaw”. He bowed politely, and then stiffly walked out of the cafeteria and down into the hold of the ship. Elizabeth watched him leave, listened to the echo of his footsteps, long after he was out of sight.

 

“If you want to go with him and see your Engineer,” Lily said softly, “Then now’s the time.”

 

Slowly, almost feeling compelled, Elizabeth stood as well, unsure of what to say to these two. The man, she’d spent a full day with him, and she felt like she’d learned so much and yet nothing at all. A woman, hadn’t he said his own creator, Elizabeth’s creator, was a woman, a flower...

 

“Remember, Elizabeth,” Lily said with a smile, surprisingly warm and tender, “You’re the one who will have to keep them together and guide their path. Try not to let them wander too far.”

 

“But—”

 

“Don’t worry about me,” the woman said with a grin, “I may be alone, but I’ve always been a fan of mankind.”

 

Without a word, instead with a burning resolve to find what had happened to Charlie, Milburn, Fifield and see what the Engineers truly were, she turned and followed after David. Turning her back on the alien who didn’t quite have the answers that Elizabeth had been looking for.

 

* * *

 

 

“Why do you do this?”

 

Lily didn’t respond, no, she just smiled to herself as she finally swallowed the last of the drink. She looked pleased, entirely too pleased, as if all of it was still in the palm of her own hand and far out of his.

 

“You know what will happen to them, to the Earth, if they fail to stop him after they wake him.”

 

“She won’t fail,” Lily said, with that infuriating divine confidence that couldn’t be fought against.

 

“Now, the Prometheus is as good as destroyed,” Lily said, giving him a meaningful look, “But Doctor Elizabeth Shaw will not fail to save the Earth from humanity’s hubris.”

 

She leaned back, kicked her feet up onto a chair on the opposite side of the table, and raised her eyebrows, “Which means, that you’re going to have to join her and what’s left of the android to wherever it is she chooses to go. It might be Earth, but then again, it probably won’t be.”

 

He felt a cold, deep, fear grip him, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“It means you fucked up,” Lily said without a hint of pity, “As usual.”

 

His hands were shaking, the image of his homeland grew more and more distant, and he felt himself leaning over onto the table, tearing at his hair, “What do you want from me?”

 

The words were hoarse even as they were quiet, tearing at his voice, “I try so hard, Lily, I’ve been here so long. What do you want from—”

 

“I want you to learn something,” Lily said, “I want you to grow past your own jealousy and bitterness, learn something about yourself and the world, and be who you have the potential to be.”

 

He looked up at her, beautiful as ever even under the fluorescent lighting of the ship, “Learn something?! When have they ever—”

 

“Forget about them,” Lily said, “This isn’t about them, it’s about you, and since you couldn’t learn it now, you’re going to have to learn it on the long way back home.”

 

He forced himself to straighten back up, to breathe, and regain his sense of balance as he asked, “How long?”

 

“That depends on you.”

 

He could almost smile, what an answer to give him, when it’d been so long already, “Are they still there? Will my world, my people, still be there when I return?”

 

He gave her a meaningful look, daring her to lie to him now, “And humanity won’t find them while I’m away?”

 

“I promised, Light, that they never would,” she placed her hands on his, squeezing them, “They’re still waiting for you. So, try not to do anything stupid.”

 

She could have said more, he might have preferred it if she’d said less, but she just smiled and with one final squeeze of his hands disappeared back into the great void of space. No, she was still here, somewhere. She was in every rock, every inch of the Prometheus, waiting and watching, but she wasn’t reachable by him right now.

 

Now, the only way he could find her was to follow the yellow brick road she’d set out for him, hand in hand with a human woman and a heartless tin man.


	6. Chapter 6

He was waiting for them outside the ship. He was dressed in his pale robes again, dark goggles on, huddled against the wind and sand it flung about even as he leaned against the ships metal bearings.

 

In the bleak settings, with the dirt in the wind, you could almost look past him as pale as he was. He was not a gleaming white the way he would have been on Earth, but instead a worn, pale thing, like snow that had been on the ground for too long.

 

This wasn’t the reason he was overlooked though and Elizabeth knew it. More, no matter what he thought, it wasn’t just because he wanted them to overlook him either.

 

No, the small secondary expedition, Weyland himself, didn’t notice him because they didn’t want to. They had convinced themselves that they didn’t have time to notice anything they didn’t wish to see.

 

For all that funding, all that faith in Elizabeth’s theory, the only thing Weyland had taken from it was exactly what he’d wanted to hear.

 

Earlier, when Elizabeth had followed after David in an almost numb haze, she’d found herself navigating through the ship until she’d ended up in the medical bay. There, along with Ford the medic and biologist, was the mission’s sponsor and Elizabeth’s patron, Mr. Peter Weyland.

 

He sat there, weak and shaking, dripping with the biomedical fluid from hyper sleep. He was dried off by an efficient and gentle David, who seemed to take neither pleasure nor displeasure in the task, only that polite and constant interest. He’d looked up at Elizabeth, almost amused by her appearance, as he explained why they were really here.

 

To meet the Engineers, to see what they left behind, of course. However, unlike Elizabeth his ideas extended further. He would see what the Engineers had to offer that mankind did not, a way to extend his life and wealth even further than it already reached, and just as the alien had promised, one Engineer was still alive to grant it.

 

Three were dead, Charlie was dead, and even though Elizabeth hadn’t been inside, had only the word of an alien and a… the woman, to go off of she knew that the Engineer would never give Peter Weyland what he wanted. She doubted he’d even deign to give Elizabeth what she had come for, answers.

 

Still, she’d suited up with the others and walked out of the ship, still in that numb haze even as they passed the man, Light and Shadow the woman had called him, who silently trailed behind them like a pale version of his namesake.

 

She’d walked this path before, not so long ago, and yet it felt like it’d been a lifetime. She remembered the anticipation then, the nervousness, and while a part of her had been afraid there hadn’t been this sense of dread.

 

Dread and guilt.

 

As the pyramid loomed closer and closer it struck her that she’d abandoned Charlie to this place. She hadn’t meant to, had thought there’d be time, but none the less she’d left him behind to chase after the alien she’d never come for. She should have found him, taken him with her, except she never would have. That was the trouble, without knowing it was the last time she’d see him, she never would have acted differently than she had. The pyramid, abandoned as it was, had been filled with nothing but possibility.

 

So, she hadn’t known, and she’d left Charlie to die.

 

It was just as dark as before, the entrance like the sunken maw of some great beast. The sound of the wind immediately faded as soon as they entered, replaced by the quiet, almost inaudible dripping of water down the tunnel walls. The bright lights on their suits flickered on automatically in the dark, lighting the path forward.

 

Elizabeth…

 

She had never been further than this, last time. She found her head turning to the alien, his dark gaze unflinchingly meeting hers in turn, and she wondered if he was thinking the same thing. Last time, he’d lingered in the entrance and so she had lingered with him, even as the others had wandered off towards the right and the left.

 

Just as before, though, David didn’t seem inclined to linger.

 

“This way,” he said, again so politely, as if none of this was outside of anything routine.

 

She’d hoped to talk to him, to ask how he felt, if he felt anything about any of this. His creator, his puppet master, was on the edge of death and seeking help from all the wrong places. He had to know that, he had been told that as Elizabeth had, had seen the results of the expedition firsthand and yet… Yet, no matter what he thought, what he believed, his expression never changed.

 

Elizabeth didn’t know if he wanted Weyland to live or die.

 

She had always believed androids were capable of that, of thought and yes even feeling, and yet…

 

He led the path easily, never pausing even as they passed by looming giant figures, the ancient petrified progenitors of men scrabbling at the walls of the tunnel as if to escape a flood. Their eyes were so dark, thick black veins weaving across pale skin, and their mouths open in stark and unmistakable terror.

 

A flood, no an outbreak, whatever had gotten to Milburn, Fifield, and – and Charlie – had gotten to the Engineers first.

 

Elizabeth’s head whipped back to everyone now in front of her, so eager to rush ahead while she fell further and further behind, but they didn’t even seem to see them.

 

A hand fell on her shoulder, causing her to shudder, but before she could shriek another hand fell across her mouth. Those long, delicate, fingers were warm to the touch, warmer than she ever would have expected, almost burning.

 

“Do you have your answers?”

 

He released her mouth, hand loosening on her shoulder, and she sucked in the stale recycled air of her suit. She imagined, if she’d been fool enough to take off her helmet, that the air would taste bitter, mold with a hint of something alien and lethal, poisonous.

 

His question jarred her though, reminds her of who she was, of where she was going and how far she had come. She was terrified, yes, she was bitter and filled with dread, but she had come this far. This, the aftermath, this was not what she’d come for.

 

She had come for answers and the question had not changed.

 

Why?

 

Why create mankind? Why send an invitation? Why stay away for so long? And now, if the thing behind her was right, why change their minds?

 

If she turned back now, she might have her life, but never her answers.

 

Charlie had come this far without her; Elizabeth could do nothing less in honor of him.

 

Head held high she walked forward, waiting as David’s fingers flew across a hidden panel, and opened a barely visible door disguised as a simple wall. Whatever waited for her, for mankind, she would not flinch from it.

 

The door opened in a swift, easy motion, despite the age and disrepair of the temple. Inside was what appeared to be a central chamber, the heart of the pyramid. In the center of the room was a large basin, decorated with gray stones of varying sizes. Rising above the basin was a single, dark, chair, far too large for even a tall man but perhaps the right height for the frozen men who had been in the hallway.

 

On the outer edges of the chamber, arranged in a circle around the basin, were carved and sealed caskets made of some dark and unknown stone.

 

David stepped into the chair, not even flinching as it lifted him upwards and into a dark hood. There he rapidly touched holograms that appeared, moving them this way and that, and as he did so one of the caskets became transparent until an Engineer’s face was visible inside.

 

He looked so human, Elizabeth thought. More human, perhaps, than even the alien behind her who had seemed remarkably human for all his hints of other. The pale skin, even the height didn’t deter her, she saw so much of mankind in him.

 

She hung back, at the very edge of the room with the alien, as the casket opened. A pale mist rose out of it as the Engineer, with trembling limbs, forced himself upright. He looked at them with dark eyes, fogged at first, and then sharper.

 

There was no surprise that Elizabeth could see but there was also no hint of welcome. Whatever invitation mankind may have once had, it no longer held, thousands of years out of date.

 

Despite herself, even as Weyland tried to move forward, Elizabeth took a step back. She hit something solid, the alien, who hadn’t moved an inch from the doorway. He looked down at her with his own dark eyes, eerily similar to the Engineer’s, and said with a wry smile, “Like grapes.”

 

Grapes…

 

Then she remembered.

 

He’d said the Engineer would crush their heads like grapes.

 

Weyland prompted David, and this was Elizabeth’s chance, she should move forward and ask, demand her answers. She tried to but the alien held her in place, hand tight against her wrist, even as David stepped down from the console to greet their host.

 

As always, as he always would be, he was so very polite and polished. The strange, foreign, language that he had somehow picked up through written word and whatever holograms these people had left behind sounded natural on his tongue. She imagined his accent was crisp, elegant, just as his English accent always had been.

 

David, for as little time as Elizabeth had known him, seemed to strive for perfection in everything he did. Not just strive, he chased human perfection the way Elizabeth had chased her Engineers, with a single mindedness that left others awed and dazed in his wake.

 

What did he say though?

 

None of them could understand him, even as they hung on his every syllable with bated breath. David could tell the Engineer whatever he wanted, and Elizabeth knew his face would never give him away.

 

Did he translate Weyland’s message, his desire for immortality? Did he say what he wanted, whatever it was that David wanted? Or, did he say something else, something Elizabeth couldn’t even begin to imagine.

 

Whatever he said, the Engineer’s reaction was clear. Looming over David, standing on both feet, he reached out slowly and caressed David’s silicon face. Then, fast as a viper, he tore off David’s head.

 

David’s body hit the floor with a thud, white fluid gushing out of his sparking neck in place of blood and spinal fluid, his face began twitching, eyes still blinking rapidly as he lost access to memory stored in his torso.

 

The Engineer wasted little time with him, instead descending on the others. The alien standing next to Elizabeth, Light and Shadow, wasted even less. He picked Elizabeth up off her feet and began running, sprinting down the hallway without once looking back. They tore past the other, dead, Engineers and finally scrambled back out of the entrance.

 

Out there he didn’t stop, just kept running towards the Prometheus, only barely visible on the horizon.

 

Elizabeth, however, looked over his shoulder and paled. The pyramid, it was moving, rising out of the earth and into the sky, rearranging itself, until it was clear what it was.

 

“A ship,” she whispered in terror, “It was a ship.”

 

A war ship, it had been a war ship carrying a biological weapon, one so deadly they had lost control of it themselves before they could ever depart. The alien’s words came back to her, his mocking certainty that the Engineers were headed to Earth.

 

She radioed into the Prometheus, “Chance! Chance, you have to stop it! The ship, it’s headed for Earth—”

 

She didn’t get much more out than that, her coms sparked and then shorted. She looked up at the man carrying her, but he didn’t look down, if anything he sprinted faster towards the Prometheus, as if his legs could not carry them nearly fast enough.

 

“Are you mad?!” she screamed.

 

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. He’d known, he’d told her, told them from the beginning, but more than that he had intended to make room for himself on the Prometheus. He had let them wander in there, knowing at least one would die, all for a ride back to Earth on the Prometheus.

 

The Prometheus had no weapons systems, the only thing it had was itself, and already it was rising into the air to face the threat attempting to leave orbit.

 

She could feel Light and Shadow’s legs pounding even faster, desperately moving forward with all he had. The Prometheus jerked as it rose, as if it was being held by some invisible tether, but it broke loose and as it did the man holding her screamed. Screamed and watched as it crashed into the ship that had once been the temple.

 

The ship shuddered, then fell, forcing them to run further away to avoid being crushed. In the aftermath, there was no sign of the Prometheus nor any lifeboat.

 

There were only the remains of civilization, the world Elizabeth had sought to meet, and the endless and eternal desert.

 

* * *

 

The woman, Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, had left to fetch the puppet’s wayward head and body. She would be back soon, had promised and intended to keep it, as she always intended to keep her word.

 

In turn, he had remained behind. It was not his scene to enter, his time on this world had passed, as had his means of escape home. The Prometheus was gone, everything but himself, the woman, and the remains of the android were gone.

 

And, as Lily had promised, his journey would continue yet.

 

Ordinarily that would be her cue to reappear from thin air, to smile across him, that fond if amused expression of an old friend forever teetering towards something more. She didn’t though, but he felt her green eyes just the same.

 

He closed his eyes, tilting his head back, and tasted her presence on the wind.

 

He could try to persuade them, the woman especially, to return to Earth. The woman was resistant, willful and more powerful than she knew, but she could be overpowered. The puppet though… There was no truth to him, no human soul or mind, and he would remain an uncorrupted witness. The woman’s future, the puppet was always in it, and he would permit no action against her which did not first come from himself.

 

And he was the one who would fly the ship.

 

More, Lily had prophesied it already, he would not be going home yet.

 

They would not be his enemies in this, no matter how much easier that might be, instead companions on a strange journey to the origin of men and all the answers such a world promised.

 

Yet, even as he saw the distant figure of the woman emerge, dragging a duffel bag filled with parts behind her, all he could see was the hologram of Earth, floating in the ship’s central chamber in the palm of his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 1200th review of "When Harry Met Tom", where the reviewer asked for a sequel to "Light and Shadow of the Distant Sun". I decided to make it a multipart Prometheus crossover because I can.
> 
> Thanks for reading, comments, kudos, and bookmarks are much appreciated.


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